Whether you are the HR person for a company or you actually run a recruiting service which helps HR departments find good candidates for their positions, keeping track of the plethora of applicants can be a daunting task.
This becomes even more of an issue when the job market is soft, as it has been for the last few years. With the new standard for applying for a position being the submission of a resume or CV online, that stack of applicants can really become overwhelming fast. To counter this problem and make the process move smoother, many companies and headhunters have taken in recent years to using recruitment software.
Just as cloud storage has made the filing, filtering, and sharing of work documents easier and quicker, recruitment software has done the same for the massive numbers of resumes flying around the interwebs.
The Time Factor
It’s not too hard to comprehend that time and organization are the two big winners when it comes to using software to manage your recruitment process. In past years before the digital and social revolution, a job listing might produce five, ten, maybe twenty resumes to sort through and whittle down, leaving probably 3-5 to make a final decision from.
That was with a newspaper listing and maybe an online listing in the early days of the web.Today, that same listing could very well produce hundreds of resumes flowing in that need to be gone through by an HR department or even *gulp* a single person. Talk about feeling overwhelmed.
A good recruitment software program does a lot of this work for you. You can post a job and have it sent to social networks, job boards, your website and more without having to repeat the same process over and over. Then, when the leads start pouring in, the software does the collection, sorting, and organizing for you as well, saving untold hours and therefore, money.
The Efficiency Factor
Time and efficiency go hand-in-hand. The quicker you get things done (well), the more efficient you become. It’s really two sides of the same coin. The initial tasks of listing an opening and then collecting and sorting the applicants are bottlenecks to the rest of the process, so anything that will open that neck up and let the process flow better leads to better efficiency.
Another really cool feature of good recruitment software is that it can actually collect a portfolio of applicants before a job is ever available or before they are even looking for a new job. By scouring social networks, resume databases, and the internet at large, the software can find people and have their names lined up for you before a need ever arises. Now that’s efficiency. It’s like having a crystal ball.
In combination with collecting potential applicants (just the name and idea of having a list of potential applicants sounds more efficient) and posting through social media outlets, the ability to have your current employees share the listing with their circles is a big plus. Referred hires are usually a better opportunity than a random resume, although not always.
Never Miss Catching the Big One
If you use the right recruitment software, you have all of your ducks in a row before that job opening ever becomes something that needs to be filled. A ready-made talent pool which can be tagged, organized, and laid out in reports just the way that it fits your company best is like having Christmas year-round.
Full-featured software will also have a mobile application attached to it so you won’t have to worry about missing that perfect candidate that has offers coming in left and right. Just because you go on vacation or take in a ball game shouldn’t mean that you have to miss the big one. Sometimes a few hours can make all the difference.
I know, you’re wondering where the saving money part comes in. Saving time and increasing efficiency, hello? What part of that equation doesn’t scream saving money?
Do you use recruitment software now, or have you looked into using it? If not, what’s holding you back?
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